Wooga Expands In Mobile, With Bubble Island For iPhone, iPad

Berlin gaming startup Wooga has made a major move from Facebook-based social games to mobile games over the past year.

Moving to mobile is a key priority for many social gaming companies such as Zynga, as well as for platforms such as Facebook.

Wooga is now launching its popular Bubble Island game on iOS. The game has already had 60 million people play on Facebook since it launched in 2010. The game has 6.5 million monthly active users on Facebook, according to AppData.

Wooga has seen success moving its Diamond Dash game from Facebook to iOS. That game has had 30 million downloads since December. Now it's aiming to replicate that success with Bubble Island. Like Diamond Dash, Bubble Island is a 60 second bubble shooting casual social game. Players compete with their friends for top scores by connecting through Facebook.

About a year ago, Wooga decided to shift its focus to mobile games, says Wooga CEO Jenns Begemann. A year ago the company had 10 people on mobile bu tnow it has 60% of its staff its 250 people on mobile. In May 2011, Wooga raised $24 million in venture capital partly to make the investments in mobile. Over the next six months, the company plans to launch a number of new titles, doubling its portfolio of games, Begemann says. The company will launch as many games in the next six months as it did in the past three years.

To bring Bubble Island to mobile, Wooga made a number of changes to adapt the game play to touchscreen devices. These subtle changes have taken months to develop but they're worth it, Begemann says, because they make the game play much faster and smoother.

Computing is undergoing a major revolution moving to touchscreen devices, Begemann says, similar to the shift to graphical user interfaces in the 1990s. And touchscreen devices in particular such as tablets are key, he says. "We really bet on the touch screen in your hand. We see hundreds of millions of users. In homes and for consumers, the tablet replaces the PC," Begemann says.

Despite the company's move to mobile, Begemann still sees an important place for Facebook based desktop games. There's still growth on the Facebook platform on PCs, Begemann says. In addition, even on mobile, Facebook integration is critical for Wooga. Those who play Diamond Dash on mobile with Facebook integration play twice as long as those who don't connect with Facebook. And those with Facebook are eight times more likely to pay money in the game as those who don't connect with Facebook. About 68% of Wooga's active users connect with Facebook. The upshot, Begemann says, is people play more when their friends are playing. "We are social creatures," he says. "Being connected is very important."

I was previously a staff reporter at Forbes covering start-ups and venture capital. I was previously a reporter for Dow Jones VentureWire where my work also appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Follo...